The biography of "school's parent"
Ede Porges
was born on 18 May 1819 in Prague. His parents
passed away when he was still a
young child. His first form of subsistence was covered
by teaching. He obtained his technical degree
at the University of Technology in Prague.
He wanted to be a teacher. He moved to Hohenems,
and became an instructor at
the public school of the city.
After the Hungarian war
of independence (1849), the Austrian government decided
that German should become the national
language of Hungary. This decision led the Austrian government
to look for suitable instructors.
On the strength of his
pedagogical achievements, Ede Porges was found appropriate
for carrying out the educational policy of the government in
Vienna.
In 1859, he was in charge of leading the German-language primary
school at Pécs.
The German policy of the Austrian
government had failed also in education,
so they closed
the model school at Pécs. At this time
Ede Porges was working as a bookkeeper, and during
this year he had the idea to open a
commercial school at Pécs. On June 26, 1875
he applied for permission to
establish a three-class, public commercial school.
On October 20, 1875 he opened
the Commercial Secondary School at Széchenyi
tér 6.
But his
personal will was not enough (financial problems)
to maintain the public school.
He had only a few students. He thought this was because his qualified
students did not get a volunteer right (they
only had to join the army
for one year). He reached his goal: his students
obtained this right in 1887. Then he had 30 students,
and in the next term he had 92.
In 1895, after 20 years
of successful work, Ede Porges — with the
support of the Ministry of Religion and
Public Education — handed the directorship to Béla
Kondor, a qualified teacher
of commercial schools.
Ede Porges died on October 1, 1904, in Pécs.
He was a democratic, progressive founder
who worked competently and made great sacrifices for his school.
He inscribed his name indelibly into
the cultural history of the city. After his death,
the school remained privately run until 1908, when it
passed into the ownership of the city of Pécs;
it was later nationalised by the state in 1948.
Religious schools were prevalent at the time, but Ede
Porges’s school stood out for its democratic spirit.
The students were prepared, in this democratic spirit,
to work in commerce, finance, or administration.
The school produced well-trained leading professionals
for important positions in Pécs and across Hungary.
Translated from Hungarian by Mariann
Grüner
(2007)